A movie lets Dolly be Dolly

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A singer (Dolly Parton) clashes with the choir director (Queen Latifah) in “Joyful Noise.

Updated: February 10, 2012 8:16AM

NEW YORK — There are reasons why Dolly Parton hasn’t made a big-screen movie in 20 years. None of them revolve around the time it takes to maintain her amazing Dollyness.

At the tender age of 65, she still comes with the mile-high blonde wig, long red nails, miniature waist and — um — facial nips and tucks.

It’s a look that’s about six decades in the making.

“I’ve always patterned my look after the town tramp,” Parton says. “When I was growing up, there was this woman who walked the streets in my town. I thought she was the prettiest thing in the world.

“I can’t say her name, but it’s enough for you to know that she was absolutely beautiful. I’d say to people, ‘Ain’t she pretty?’ I’d hear back, ‘She ain’t nothing but trash,’ ” Parton says, shaking her head.

The wig doesn’t move an inch. She’s a slip of a woman in black pants and a waist so tiny a sixth-grader could grab it in two hands. She wears a tight-fighting white shirt that emphasizes her assets.

“At that moment I saw the town tramp, I knew I wanted to have pretty things, but we couldn’t afford it when I was growing up,” she says. “But I wanted to look good, so I’d pick berries and make lipsticks. I’d use matches and draw brows and beauty marks.

“My grandfather was a preacher and he teamed up with my daddy. Neither of them wanted me to ever wear any makeup, but they couldn’t wipe it off me or burn it out of me.

“I was a rebel,” Parton says in that familiar down-home twang. “I got whipped a lot for just being myself.”

She has been celebrated for half a century for the same thing and brings that persona to the film “Joyful Noise,” opening Friday. It’s the story of a small-town church choir that wants to win a national spiritual singing competition.

Parton plays G.G. Sparrow, a rich woman with a great voice and a troubled grandson (Jeremy Jordan) who is living with her.

She wants to modernize the music and include rap and Michael Jackson. She butts heads with an old-fashioned mother (Queen Latifah) and interim choir director who feels that the singers should stick to the classics.

What was it like for the country music queen to meet the other Queen?

“Let’s just start with the fact that Dolly brought this homemade fudge to the set every single day,” Queen Latifah gripes in a good-natured voice. “Everyone was like, ‘Where is it? Where is it? It was addicting, but Dolly never ate any of it.”

Dolly just laughs. “I starve myself!” she admits. “But I’d do anything for some nice chicken and dumplin’s.”

But we digress.

Parton, who hasn’t appeared at the multiplex since playing a Chicago radio host in 1992’s “Straight Talk,” says she was looking “for an uplifting story. This movie is about pure love of family, of church and of the music.”

Parton and Latifah weren’t lifelong buddies. It was director Todd Graff who put the two together.

“These people say yes when they’re asked if it’s the right project,” he says. “This was written with [Parton] in mind.”

On the set, he let her loose. “I didn’t want Dolly not to be Dolly,” he says. “She was well within her comfort zone. She is particularly good at being who she is. I didn’t want to stretch her. I wanted to celebrate the Dollyness.

“Even her choir robe was tapered,” Graff says.

Says Parton, “I wanted to set out to inspire people with this movie. But what was really inspiring to me was working with Queen Latifah.

“I’ll never forget the first day in the recording studio. It was the first time we laid eyes on each other in person, and we just went to the mike and started jamming and singing. I thought, ‘I just love her.’ ”

Latifah adds, “I loved her ‘tell it like it is’ demeanor.”

Parton: “Where I’m from, we always tell it like it is. Let’s be honest here. You can get some Hollywood individuals in a room and you just don’t have that thing that clicks.

“We really liked each other. We weren’t playing with each other. We just clicked from the beginning.”

Clicking doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a nice catfight.

“I’m the one who told Todd, ‘Let us fight but make it fair!” Parton cries. “I said, ‘Let’s do it tit for tat — pardon the expression.’ ”

One hates to ask: Did Dolly mind when Latifah lambasted her verbally for too much plastic surgery?

Dolly just giggles. “I do what makes me happy,” she says. “I always had nice boobs. I got them doctored some as years when by. It’s about your own choices.”

From her childhood in a one-room shack in Locust Ridge, Tenn., Parton grew up to be one of the biggest names in country music.

Her hits include the songs “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “I Will Always Love You,” which became a megahit for Whitney Houston.

Parton made her movie debut in “Nine to Five” (1980) and received an Oscar nomination for writing the title tune.

Her other film roles include “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” (1982), “Rhinestone” (1984) and “Steel Magnolias” (1989). She recently voiced Dolly Gone in “Gnomeo & Juliet.”

She would like to make more films. “I’m a little too old to play the younger parts and a little too young to play anything but a glamorous grandmother,” she says.

She had no children but built a $100 million business empire called Dolly Parton Enterprises. In 1986, she opened her theme park Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. She quietly put most of a town to work.

“I don’t ride the rides,” Parton cautions. “We did build the biggest ride ever called Wild Eagle, and I kept hearing, ‘Dolly, you gotta ride this one.’ I said, ‘I don’t have to do anything, darlin, and I’m not gettin’ on it.

“Isn’t it enough that I wrote a theme song for it?” she laughs.

“The funny thing is we had a bunch of Dolly look-alikes, 14 of ’em, on the ride. When the ride stopped, I ran behind the thing and made it look like I just got off!” she confesses. “I’m clever that way!”

Her good-natured manner is typical Dolly, who takes nothing for granted.

“God has been so good to me,” she muses. “So many of my friends who are my age aren’t doing much anymore. I feel like I’m just starting again. I’m dreaming new dreams.”

She will dream them in the big hair, long nails and Dolly-tight clothes.

“Darlin’, if you come to my door at 8 in the morning, what you see right now is what you get, 365 days a year,” says Parton. “You will see the wig, the glitter and the nine-inch nails at that hour.”

What if we ring her bell at five to 8?

“Then I’m not answering the door!”

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